What should be my answer?
Edit: got a job. Thanks guys!
Remember that interview questions aren’t going to be asking for specifics because there is no way for you to know all the intricacies of how their VPN solution works. So start in a logical order. I’d answer something like this:
“In my previous employment, VPN was a common issue. I usually start by checking the configuration on the client side. Making sure they can reach the internet first and then asking for any error codes they are getting when trying to connect. If everything appears correctly there, then I start looking at issues on our side like password, expired or locked credentials, VPN routing issues and so on. If I don’t see any issues there, I’d look to see if others are having issues connecting to the VPN and if this is a larger scale outage.”
Most interviewers will accept this answer and it shows that you can think logically. If they press you for details, then that’s up to your technical knowledge of VPNs. Remember that very few places are looking for you to construct a VPN from scratch, just the steps you’d take in your troubleshooting
Learn about the ipconfig, tracert, nslookup, and net stat commands.
Depends on the issue.
assuming you’re troubleshooting an issue where a client cannot connect to a VPN network. ( which is where most help desk issues will most likely arise)
in no particular order:
- Check they have the right credentials and sever address
- does their home subnet match the one they are connecting to? in this case they may have to full tunnel or change their home subnet
- ping an address on the remote network to verify connectivity,
- if they are using RDP over the VPN then are the correct ports open
- Check the VPN client for updates.
- Does their public IP need to be whitelisted?
Probably more troubleshooting steps, but i feel these are the most common on the client side of things.
This right here is your answer/what they will expect to hear. They will also likely be testing your ability to give clear simple instructions on how to find said menus for users. Wouldn’t hurt to know about network sign in from the lock screen, what users can do to sign into their computer when their recently changed AD password isn’t letting them unlock their computer, and be aware many companies use different VPN clients aside from the baked in Windows 10 one.